The children, as one, pause in their reciting of a Putonghua rhyme. Around them, the Jasmine’s other residents drop what they are doing, whether that is watering plants or handling laundry. Almost apologetically her students put their heads down before darting out of sight, down the staircase, evacuating the rooftop with the rest.
Very quickly she is alone, save for a deeply tattooed person advancing upon her.
They are openly armed, a coppery gun strapped to their hip, theatrically long in the barrel. The kind of firearm one uses on an armored vehicle or a large animal—Ovuha suspects its owner has given it a name. She can almost hear the tug and push of a passing crow’s ciliary wires, or the whirr-click within the minuscule, sizzling brain of a moth trapped in the spider-flower web. Apparatuses through which Samsara may survey its domain, reading sight and sound, emissions and heat. In theory that means everyone is protected at all times, even non-citizens. In practice, she knows no Interior Defense will be dispatched, for the same reason that camp wardens are free to exercise petty tyranny on the bodies of their charges. Bodies without personhood are no more remarkable, and no more deserving of mercy, than a cut of chicken or a handful of offal.
Even so this thug, or whoever their master is, makes her curious: they are not Bureau or Interior Defense. Institutional cruelty is one thing. Privatized is quite another.
“You’re new here,” they say.
“I’m afraid so.” She doesn’t assay witticisms, something clever. Instead she looks them over, evaluating as they draw near and then stop a few paces from her. A threat on account of the gun, but also because they’re wiry and move like someone who understands impact, understands the workings of human muscles and alimentary channels. Where to hurt to disable, where to inflict permanent damage.
The thug lights a cigar. The reek of it overwhelms the air. “It is dangerous to be without friends, Ovuha Sui. You may find yourself in want of things, in need even, of ways in or ways out. People need people. United we stand…”
Ovuha is almost moved to smile at this cliché, at how meaningless it is, at the way it is uttered as a taunt. At the theatrics of this person’s tattoos, their elongated firearm. Every aspect is rote. “I would not mind friends. What do I have to do for friendship, stranger?”
“With information, stranger, or a fraction of your potentiate’s stipend.”
“I haven’t any information to offer, and a fraction of almost nothing is a small fraction indeed.” She spreads her hands. “At the present I don’t find myself pressed with any need, and so I’ll have to ask you to come some other time with this offer of friendship.”
The thug rushes her. She could foil the charge, it is easy enough: as they accelerate she can kick their knee, or she can grab an elbow, potentially break it. This is a combatant, but not one of any particular ability. But she has learned to take blows since she came to Anatta, has learned to accept and tolerate pain within reasonable bounds. She permits it to happen. They slam her into the wall—potted bonzais shudder; by luck the vases do not teeter and topple.
There is no blow forthcoming. Instead they’ve slapped something into her inner elbow, a jab of heat. The thug backs away, has—despite the routine—not even drawn their gun. “Don’t bother calling Interior Defense. This is a warning,” they say and turn on their heels, their business done. A gangly silhouette stalking off.
She stares after them, then at the dermal patch on her skin. Mottled gray, adhesive: it has drawn blood, has punctured with tiny needles, nearly painless. It does nothing at all, she feels only the faintest sting, less than the bite of an ant. In a few seconds heat overtakes her, total, and warps her entire limbic response. She staggers backward and a pot does fall this time, spilling twisted shrub and crystallized fertilizer and gray soil. Her back cracks against something hard. Her vision turns liquid, as though she’s viewing the world from deep undersea.
One of her implants quickens.
A contact toxin, but one that is also a puzzle for her—and only her—to solve. Strands of ancient math unfurl before her, roiling unkempt equations. Beneath them, a part of code. It is a game of memory more than anything, except the last time she saw the set was five years ago, maybe eight, and she lacks the array of mnemonics or recording that she once had. Her naked brain, for the most part, is the only aid and tool left to her. Any other she cannot yet make use.
She has fifteen seconds.
Flip the strands. Reverse the order of code. Match them to what she remembers. There is no confirmation whether she has done them half correct or a quarter or none at all until the heat relents and the poison subsides. The reward is her continued breathing when otherwise she would have gone into anaphylaxis.
Ovuha draws herself up, peeling off the dermal patch. It has been spent, but she’ll find a way to dispose of it later so that no trace will be left. Had she died here, all the rest would have died with her, unless her replacement has been trained in secret—secret even from her, a contingency for a contingency. That is possible, knowing her predecessor, a woman who liked schemes within schemes. Who liked to be absolutely, utterly sure, a habit Ovuha has inherited herself.
Best to act as though she is the last, all the same. No slack. No mistake.
She inhales the air, which still carries the stench of cigar, and in her head a map expands and pours. Information like a virus, which she will need time to detangle and absorb, make a part of herself. But from the shape of it, she is sure that what needs preparing has been prepared; the seeds have been planted, and now she must reap the harvest.
On her knees, she gathers up fragments of pottery and rubs the dry soil between her fingertips until it is fine powder. She glances at the sky. It is empty and growing dark. In her imagination, it is incandescent and subjugated, blotted out by golden ships.
Chapter Five
The dead of night, blackly quiet. Suzhen jerks awake from a dream of silence tolling like bells, a dream of her birthplace. It has not made an appearance in a long time. The halls that stretched on without end, the faceted roofs and nested windows that looked out to red, naked earth.
She reads the alert and swears through her teeth. As quickly as she can she puts on her clothes, sending out a call as she does. She’s notified that first response has already been dispatched, and the nearest Interior Defense patrol will soon be about. Soon being subjective, from within the minute to within the hour. Anywhere else and they would have been onsite immediately, but the projects are disposable, the people in them even more so.
The Jasmine is in smoke when she arrives, plumes and strands of it spiraling through windows. First-response drones are extinguishing the fire, whirring through the building in sleek, silver schools. From the look of it, the combustion must have spread over an entire floor, the insulation barriers too ancient to keep it in check. Two floors, Suzhen corrects herself as her taxi lands. The roof is alight with emergency signals, marking the area off-limit to aerial traffic.
She finds Ovuha in the courtyard with the other residents. Most cluster together for comfort or shared resignation, standing guard over their belongings. Clothes, hard currency, first-aid kits. Jewelry and data cubes in clutched hands, the few pieces that have survived camp confiscation. Ovuha alone is without possessions, other than the portable strapped to her wrist.
“The fire started in my room,” Ovuha says calmly. “I must apologize—I wasn’t able to save the clothes you bought for me.”
“In your room.” The dying flames and emergency lights carve up Ovuha’s face, giving it the look of cracked sculpture. Suzhen calls up diagnostics. First-degree burns along one arm. “How did it happen?” Her first thought veers inevitably to self-harm. The sudden guttering of will that can happen to anyone, any time, striking hard and fast as fire on human dermis. A cigarette burn here, a heated razor there. But the diagnostics reports that the injuries are fresh and the intensity of combustion too great, explosive.